Sweden Green Lights Nuclear Power, Moving Away from “Green Energy” Reliance
Climate cult dominoes are beginning to fall.
Many of us have noted that Sweden had the most sensible response to the covid pandemic, which focused on protecting vulnerable populations and not relying on public gathering restrictions that ended up being useless and destructive.
The Scandinavian country may now be leading Europe and the rest of the West to a better approach to energy as well. The nation’s parliament has just given the green light to push forward with plans to build a new nuclear plant after voting 40 years ago to phase out atomic power.
Changing the target to “100% fossil-free” electricity, from “100% renewable” is key to the government’s plan to meet an expected doubling of electricity demand to around 300 TwH by 2040 and reach net zero emissions by 2045.
“This creates the conditions for nuclear power,” Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson said in parliament. “We need more electricity production, we need clean electricity and we need a stable energy system.”
Sweden’s parties agreed a deal in 2016 that new reactors could be built at existing sites. However, without subsidies, it has been seen as too expensive. The new right-of-centre coalition says new reactors are essential to power the shift to a fossil-free economy and has promised generous loan guarantees.
Sweden has abandoned its “100% renewable” energy target in favour of adopting a technology-neutral Net Zero policy in order to create the conditions for nuclear power. “We need a stable energy system”, the finance minister said.#CostOfNetZero
👉https://t.co/pKQBcCwHSm pic.twitter.com/baZYGhC4Zd
— Net Zero Watch (@NetZeroWatch) June 22, 2023
I would argue that fossil fuels aren’t the danger that is being presented by climate cultists and their media minions. However, nuclear power is exceedingly more efficient and reliable as an energy source than wind or solar.
Observers said the decision implicitly acknowledges the low quality of unstable wind and solar. It shows a general collapse of confidence in the renewable energy agenda pioneered in the Nordic countries.
British lobby group Net Zero Watch, which describes the net zero roadmaps of Western nations as ‘utopian and unsustainable,’ welcomed the move.
“The net zero plans envisioned by the International Energy Agency (IEA) are dangerously expensive and will result in painful reductions in living standards for all but the richest,” Net Zero Watch stated. In that regard, Sweden came to the only logical conclusion, it said.
The move may also indicate the climate cult dominoes are beginning to fall, as European investment firms have also been backing away from ESG (Environmental-Social-Governance) policies.
It will be interesting to see how Sweden’s nuclear power industry expands and evolves at this point and if it will be a new model for energy resource development.
Nuclear represented around 30% of Sweden’s electricity production in 2022.
Opinions on nuclear energy differ across Europe. Following the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011, Germany chose to phase-out nuclear, with the country’s final three nuclear reactors closing earlier his year.
France has remained staunchly pro-nuclear, causing delays to this month’s EU renewables bill due to its failure to accommodate nuclear generation under renewables targets. France currently generates around 70% of its electricity from nuclear.
Vattenfall, Sweden’s state-owned utility, plans to build at least two small modular reactors and extend the lifetime of the country’s existing nuclear reactors.
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Comments
Good! Let’s hope more countries get sensible about their energy needs and how to meet them. Renewables are, and likely will be for some time, at best a supplement. A functional, high tech society needs reliable 24/7 energy: fossil fuels can do that, nuclear can do that, but currently renewables just can’t. They are too susceptible to forces outside man’s control that can disrupt energy production.
The category of renewables can be a big supplement, though. Depending on location and energy source, it’s possible that anywhere from 50% to 80% or more could come from those sources. For example, Norway does VERY well generating up 90% of its electricity most of the time from hydropower. In the U.S., the desert Southwest could generate high proportions via solar and even wind in places. Great Lakes could be a somewhat dependable wind source, Etc.
As always, once it become political – and this is almost 95% political now – reason goes out the window and it all become a stupid argument just to win a point. E.g., some of the more hardcore environmentalists fight hydropower should a single fish get harmed. When a day comes up with low sunshine, another side points and says “see it’ll never work!”. There’s always a rational inbetween place.
We are not moving in a sensible, supplemental direction. Not even close. What we are doing is unsustainable and actually quite dangerous both geopolitically and environmentally.
Got any data to support what you’re saying? I don’t see the “dangerous” part.
In the SW, around Ca/Nevada, the dolor farms are sucking the natural wells dry. The panels must be washed regularly, or constantly, amd the power companies are using up all the water. Towns are literally drying up
It’s a massive disaster but hey, the government doesn’t care about people, especially rural white people
Ground mount solar is easy to service, they need to be washed 1-2 times a year, water problems are from too many people for the available water resources, and I agree gov does not care about white people except for being able to rob us.
I happen to live in the desert SW, where the sun shines so much you can’t even find an appropriate day to wash vehicles. I could plaster acres of solar panels on my property and still not be able to satisfy the load of our air conditioning, well pump, and other loads necessary to off-grid living.
Fortunately, I have a happy little nuke 40 miles south of me that provides me and thousands of my neighbors with all the power I could consume (if I needed to) regardless of weather or time of day or night. And I don’t have to re-purchase the nuke every 15 years.
Put up a large pavilion. solar on top, nice shade underneath to wash your car, Solar panels easily have a 30 year life, probably longer. 15KW array should run your central AC, excess power should be used to freeze water in a large tank, and that used to keep your house cool at night. Think of that ice as a cheap battery.
Fortunately California is destroying its dams and nuclear plants so power will be even more abundant in the western US.
It sounds like simple common sense. Now they do play lip service to the b******* that is the climate change nonsense, but at least they said if we want to dedicate to electricity that at least electricity should be freaking available
My tinfoil hat keeps chanting, “thesis, antithesis, synthesis,” but I can’t see enough moves ahead to detect the trap.
These “green energy” renewables?
https://twitter.com/WxWyDaryl/status/1673830414329454592
When was the last time a nuke power plant was wiped out by a summer hail storm?
Yes that would be another huge problem with relying on renewables.
Nuke plants return 100 Times the energy expended to build them.
Wind and Solar return 5 times the energy expended. (This is comparable to cutting and burning cord wood.) You cannot have a modern civilization at that type of return
Liquid salt reactors show great promise. I still prefer independence with solar,
Sweden is a practical country with a mostly unified citizenry…must be nice
Mostly unified, except for the migrants having a wild time raping all the hot blonds and setting off bombs all over the place.
They are not citizens and I’m pretty sure the citizenry have had their fill of that nonsense.
That may be, but citizens don’t matter in Sweden. Sweden’s press is government controlled, and you can’t speak out without getting slapped with a hate crime charge (suppressing political dissent being the real reason for hate crime laws). Indeed, Sweden’s government is run by quislings, since they openly say that they hope the invaders will be as nice to them when they are in the majority as they were to the invaders. That has never happened in the history of Islam, but the facts don’t matter.
Sweden has a huge Muslim problem,
All of Europe does. Europe will be conquered without the invaders firing a shot, courtesy of its traitors.
The fact that nuclear is avilailable and governments choose not to allow it shows that if there is any crisis at all it is political, not the climate.
Boom, you got it Broomhandle! Until governments urge utilities to construct nuclear power plants, reduce regulatory red tape, provide them immunity from environmental lawsuits, and provide loan guarantees, we know that there is no climate crisis.
Erronius
DRD4’s slaughter thousands and thousands and thousand of birds yearly..DRD4′ s are nasty humans
Nuclear is only non-green in terms of who doesn’t get paid.
Nuclear is a great idea, but as Sweden is a member of the EU, and the EU’s WEF overlords hate nuclear power, I don’t see this progressing beyond a press release.